Craniocerebral trauma in acute surgical management. Primary care in a general community hospital

Head traumas frequently occur in polytrauma patients but are also found as isolated injuries. In our hospital trauma center without a neurosurgical department, in a 21-month period, 489 patients with head/brain trauma were treated. This represents 6.5% of all patients treated in the trauma and reconstructive surgery clinic. In commotio cerebri (CC = 89.5% of the patients) constant conservative management and an uneventful course were observed; in 69 patients with contusio cerebri, 18 craniotomy operations had to be performed. In contrast, in only two cases was reoperation because of recurrent hematoma necessary. In four cases with complex and/or additional injuries, transfer to a neurosurgical center took place, and in two cases photophone consultation with that center was used. The mortality was 14.5%. The diagnostic and therapeutic regimens for the different types of injury and the requirements for the management of head/brain trauma in trauma centers without neurosurgical departments are presented: emergency service and medical staff, emergency room management, intensive care management, qualified neurological examination, X-ray imaging, including CT scan, OP-room equipment and trained surgeons. If these requirements are not available in a given hospital, early transfer of all patients for whom surgical management could be necessary to a neurosurgical department should be attempted. Only in patients with severe bleeding must immediate craniotomy be performed even in hospitals which do not have all the above mentioned facilities. In patients with intracerebral bleeding, bleeding in the dorsal fossa, injury of brain nerves, carotid artery or sinus cavernosus injuries, frontobasal injuries with liquor fistula or pneumonencephalon, transfer of the patients to specialized neurosurgical centers is indicated. With this selection, we obtained the same results in a trauma center without a neurosurgical department as reported in the literature. This avoids overloading neurosurgical centers with head/brain injury patients.